Written up For Sleeping

Written Up for Sleeping on the Job: The Root Cause Nobody Looked For

I want to tell you a story from early in my career that I have thought about a lot. Not because I am trying to settle a score though I will admit there is just a little bit of that but because it contains one of the most important leadership lessons I know. The lesson is not about sleeping on the job. It is about what leaders do when they see a symptom and never bother to ask what caused it.

The Setup

I was a field engineer at Hensel Phelps, working on a project in Round Rock, Texas, north of Austin. I was young around twenty-one and newly married. I had started reading the Field Engineering Methods Manual on my own and implementing everything it taught. Things were going really well. The primary control was accurate. The secondary control was accurate. The building was going up beautifully. I was proud of the work and committed to the process.

The problem was the situation around the work. The project manager was primarily focused on teaching at a university and running a higher-profile project. His attention to this job was minimal. We were understaffed. The office presence was thin. A lot of the burden of keeping things running fell to the people on site and as the field engineer, a significant amount of it fell to me. I was working twelve, thirteen, sometimes fourteen hours a day. I was doing the work of several people. I was tired in the way that only chronic overburden produces.

One day during lunch, I put my head down on the table to close my eyes for a minute. I was exhausted. I was not neglecting my work. I was not missing anything. I simply needed to rest for a moment.

I got written up.

What Happened in the Office

The project manager and the general superintendent pulled me in. I was so tired that I was nearly falling asleep in the chair while they lectured me. They told me it was wildly unprofessional to put my head down on the desk. They documented the incident as a formal disciplinary matter. I sat there, exhausted, doing work that was going well, and received the message that my exhaustion was the problem not the conditions that created it.

Shortly after that, I wrote my resignation letter and left. I went on to become one of the leading experts on field engineering eventually so skilled that Hensel Phelps paid me to train around the country. I am not saying that to be arrogant. I am saying it because what happened in that office was the opposite of what good leadership looks like, and the consequences were felt by both sides.

The System Failed That Young Professional

Let me name what was actually happening. Two experienced leaders were barely paying attention to the project. The project manager’s primary commitments were elsewhere. The job was understaffed and everyone on site knew it. A young, newly married professional was working himself to exhaustion to keep everything running and doing it well, by every measurable indicator. And when the visible sign of that exhaustion appeared, the response was not curiosity. It was not mentorship. It was not a conversation that started with, “Hey, are you okay? What’s going on?” The response was discipline.

In Lean thinking, overburden is the first category of waste we address even before unevenness, even before the eight or nine specific types of waste we track on projects. Overburdening people is the foundational failure because everything downstream of it is compromised. When someone is operating at the edge of their capacity for an extended period, their judgment suffers, their relationships suffer, and eventually their body refuses to cooperate. That is not a character flaw. That is physics.

The leaders who wrote me up chose to address the symptom a young engineer resting his eyes during lunch without ever asking about the root cause. The root cause was overburden. The root cause was an understaffed project where the people on site were absorbing work that should have been distributed more equitably. The root cause was leadership that was not present enough to see what was actually happening. The system failed that young professional. He did not fail the system.

What Good Leadership Would Have Done

A leader operating from a root-cause mindset would have asked one question: why is this person so tired? That question opens a door. The answer reveals what is actually wrong the understaffing, the overwork, the absence of adequate support. And once you know what is actually wrong, you can fix it. You can bring in help. You can redistribute the load. You can have the honest conversation about what the job actually requires versus what the current team can reasonably provide.

Instead, the response addressed the visible behavior without ever examining the system that produced it. That approach did not solve anything. It told a hardworking young professional that his value to the organization was conditional on him never showing evidence of the exhaustion the organization created. And it accelerated his departure, along with all the capability and commitment he had been developing on their behalf.

Leadership that diagnoses systems instead of blaming people requires more effort in the moment. It is easier to write someone up than to examine whether your staffing, your leadership presence, and your project management are actually adequate. But the easy path in that moment produces the expensive outcome losing a talented person who had been keeping the job running well, and never improving the conditions that created the problem.

The Lesson That Actually Matters

Always look for root cause. When something looks wrong, before you respond to the visible symptom, ask what produced it. A worker making an error repeatedly is telling you something about the system around that worker the training, the expectations, the conditions, the support. A foreman who is reactive and short-tempered is telling you something about the pressure they are absorbing without relief. A field engineer putting his head down at lunch is telling you something about the load he has been carrying without adequate backup.

The most respectful thing a leader can do for the people on their project is to take their situation seriously enough to look for what is actually causing it. Stability must exist before accountability is fair. You cannot hold someone accountable for a behavior that the system is producing. Fix the system first. If the behavior persists after the system is fixed, then accountability makes sense. But writing up exhaustion without addressing overburden is not accountability. It is abdication dressed up as professionalism.

Here are the warning signs that leaders are addressing symptoms instead of root causes:

• Discipline is applied before anyone asks why the behavior is happening
• Staffing problems are met with requests for individuals to work harder instead of structural changes
• The same problems recur because the root cause was never identified
• People are leaving and leadership is surprised, having never examined the conditions those people were in

A Note on Treating People Well

I will close this out with something simple. Be careful how you treat people. The young professional who is exhausted and trying their hardest and receives discipline instead of support will remember that. They may go on to do remarkable things. They may build businesses. They may speak to thousands of people about the construction industry. And they will carry the lesson of how they were treated with them not necessarily with bitterness, but with clarity about what leadership looks like and what it does not look like. That clarity will shape how they lead others for the rest of their career. If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your field teams stabilize, schedule, and flow. Treat people the way you would want to be treated when you are twenty-one, newly married, working fourteen hours a day, doing the work of three people, and just need a minute to close your eyes during lunch.

On we go.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does “find the root cause” mean in a leadership context?

It means asking why a behavior or outcome is happening before responding to it. Most visible problems on construction projects errors, fatigue, disengagement, poor communication are symptoms of system conditions. Finding the root cause means identifying and fixing those conditions, not disciplining the person showing the symptom.

Is it ever appropriate to discipline someone for a performance issue?

Yes, after the system has been examined and fixed. If a person continues to fall short after adequate support, clear expectations, and appropriate resources have been provided, accountability is fair and necessary. But discipline before that examination is premature and often counterproductive.

How does overburden connect to Lean thinking?

In Lean, overburden muri in Japanese is one of the three primary categories of waste along with unevenness and the eight operational wastes. Removing overburden is addressed first because everything downstream of it degrades when people are operating beyond sustainable capacity.

What should a leader do when they see a team member showing signs of exhaustion or strain?

Ask first. Start with a genuine question: how are you doing? What is going on? The answer almost always points to something fixable in the system staffing, workload distribution, unclear expectations, inadequate support. Address that first before drawing any conclusions about the individual.

Why do talented people leave construction projects or companies?

Often because the conditions they were placed in were not sustainable and nobody bothered to notice or fix them. Overburden, lack of support, absence of mentorship, and leadership that blames rather than develops are the most common drivers. The system pushes talented people out by making the cost of staying too high.